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System76's Bonobo Extreme Tries For Extreme Performance

05-15-2014, 12:00 PM

Phoronix: System76's Bonobo Extreme Tries For Extreme Performance

One of the newest laptops out of System76, the well known hardware vendor in Linux circles for their Ubuntu support, is the latest version of their Bonobo Extreme. While the laptop weighs 8.6 lbs / 3.9 kg, it does aim to offer extreme Linux performance...

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What exactly is the point of a multi-gpu setup in Linux at the moment? Seems like a lot of added price/headaches for really no benefits/upside. Maybe SLI/Crossfire will get better support at some point, but right now it doesn't make too much sense to me.

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Well, these problems are not the problems of multi-gpu, its problems of bad devs/engineers, who design the whole system. And yeah, linux is so many years behind in gpu technologies (no support + no products, that could use it), that it doesnt even need extreme performance, medium/low performance is more than enough (i3 + intel hd graphics only). And what exactly means this "linux friendly laptop" ? Do they develop usable drivers and software themselves for hotkeys and so on or what ? And no offense, but puting so new gpu on linux friendly laptop isnt so friendly, i dont know how about nvidia, but amd really takes their time to give linux support for newest gpus, like a year or two until driver is in public + critical bugs fixed.

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Well, these problems are not the problems of multi-gpu, its problems of bad devs/engineers, who design the whole system. And yeah, linux is so many years behind in gpu technologies (no support + no products, that could use it), that it doesnt even need extreme performance, medium/low performance is more than enough (i3 + intel hd graphics only). And what exactly means this "linux friendly laptop" ? Do they develop usable drivers and software themselves for hotkeys and so on or what ? And no offense, but puting so new gpu on linux friendly laptop isnt so friendly, i dont know how about nvidia, but amd really takes their time to give linux support for newest gpus, like a year or two until driver is in public + critical bugs fixed.

You are right that AMD take their time. It is now over a year that the R290X is released and there is not yet a decent support from catalyst!

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Well, these problems are not the problems of multi-gpu, its problems of bad devs/engineers, who design the whole system. And yeah, linux is so many years behind in gpu technologies (no support + no products, that could use it), that it doesnt even need extreme performance, medium/low performance is more than enough (i3 + intel hd graphics only). And what exactly means this "linux friendly laptop" ? Do they develop usable drivers and software themselves for hotkeys and so on or what ? And no offense, but puting so new gpu on linux friendly laptop isnt so friendly, i dont know how about nvidia, but amd really takes their time to give linux support for newest gpus, like a year or two until driver is in public + critical bugs fixed.

Nvidia's binary is pretty good and generally supports new hardware when it is released. The point is - why would a Linux hardware company (i.e. laptop) release something that is not supported? It is pretty much one of the higest spec'd laptops that is -currently- supported. Maybe in the next year with SteamOS coming out we will get better multi-gpu support, but, who knows.

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No no no, question is, what they mean by "linux friendly" - do they write normal drivers with control panels for hotkeys and other things themselves, or that you have to use some default crappy abstract layer, which only implements some very basic functions and nothing more ?